


nebulous

by orphan_account



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Phan, AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Coma, Fantasy, Hospital, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-03 14:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8718223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dan Howell wakes up in a hospital, with no recollection of how he got there. Not as cliché as it sounds.





	1. chapter one.

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i do not own dan and phil and these are FICTIONAL characters based off of the internet personas danisnotonfire and amazingphil. i do not and will not make money off of this.

Every bone in Dan’s body ached, the sheets unusually rough against his skin. Groaning, he reached towards the ringing; why was there an alarm? And that wasn’t his alarm sounding…?

Opening his eyes in groggy confusion, the brunet observed his surroundings. Ringing fading to background noise, the first thing he saw was blinding light, and then, after a moment of adjusting, stark white walls and a thin sheet covering him, tubes and machines protruding out of him. Was he in hospital? What had happened?

“You’re awake!” a nurse cried out of the blue, rushing towards Dan’s bed.

“What happened?” he enquired, bewilderment written across his face.

“You were in a coma for eight months. We’re afraid we cannot find out the reason for it, but we’ll get to that later. Now, do you want some water? Food? Once you’re comfortable, our team will probably want to interview you.”

“What’s the date?” he asked immediately, ignoring the question.

“March twenty, two thousand and nine. Now, do you want anything or not?”

His mouth thinking more so than his brain, Dan replied idly, “I’m fine, thanks.”

March the twentieth. Two thousand and nine. If he had been in a coma for eight months, Phil did not exist, at least not to him. So what was all of that? Some wild ass dream? But it had felt so real, so tangible—surely it was not a dream? Fuck, maybe this was a dream. Dan could sometimes be creative, but he could never dream up something as wonderful, as beautiful as Philip Michael Lester. He had read enough cliché fanfiction for him to dream up some ‘it was all just a dream’ shit. But this felt just as real… What was going on?

Interrupting his existentialism, a doctor rushed to Dan’s side and instantly began to interrogate him. “Daniel, would you mind telling me the last memory you can think of?”

“It’s Dan,” he replied crankily. These were the people who had taken Phil away from him. Why should he give any basic courtesy to them?

“I apologise. Dan, tell me the last memory you can recall, any of it, even if it’s only tiny fragments of a situation.”

Dan felt as if he was the subject of some experiment, like this overly enthusiastic doctor was a scientist who was going to manipulate Dan’s being until he got results to sate his curiosity. Sudden anger bubbled in the patient’s stomach, stubbornness gaining a grip upon the boy.

“Fuck you.”

Sighing, the doctor pulled a seat and quirked an eyebrow, watching Dan’s jaw tense as narrowed eyes watched the hospital staff’s every move. “I understand that this must be difficult for you. I’m not saying that I know what it’s like, but you should understand that it is crucial in order for me to get as much information on the situation I can in order to best understand it.”

“My last memory,” Dan began, his voice a low, gritting venom, “was of me going to sleep in my apartment, next to my boyfriend, and the date isn’t twentieth of March two thousand and nine, it’s first of December twenty sixteen.”

For a moment, the room was filled with the scratchy noise of pen against paper, and Dan felt yet again as if he was the subject of some study, being taken apart and put together again for some intellectual gain. All that he wanted was for this to be a dream and to wake up again, this time in Phil’s arms. Suddenly, an idea struck him.

“May I use my phone?” Dan asked, a sudden soft edge to his voice, smiling warmly, silently begging that the hospital had free WiFi.

“Of course, but don’t be long. We’ve called your family over already, if that’s what you need.”

Without responding, Dan reached where his pocket would be. Realising his predicament, he went red and his arms laid awkwardly limp at his sides, feeling the hot gaze of the doctor all the while.

“Oh, my bad. Your phone is here,” the white-coated man said, handing over an old iPhone.

“Fuck,” the brown-eyed boy muttered, realising that, no, he could not check YouTube without 4G or 3G, and there was no WiFi either. Clearing his throat, he asked the doctor, “Do you have anywhere where I might be able to access the internet?”


	2. chapter two.

Mind clouded with urgency, Dan typed ‘youtube.con.userd/amniongphil’ into Internet Explorer’s address bar, before quickly using CTRL+A, and typing again. It seemed that, when he needed them most, his fingers refused to type properly, out of nerves or out of whatever else; he did not know. He did not thank the doctor for lending him a laptop with WiFi. The only thing that mattered was Phil.

Eventually, he managed to stop shaking enough to type out the URL and hit enter, licking his lips nervously. _Fucking load!_ The YouTube logo appeared. The navigation bar loaded. And then…

_Error 404: Page Not Found_

Eyes widening, Dan checked the URL. It was correct. He refused to believe it. Selecting YouTube’s search bar, the teen furiously typed out _AmazingPhil_. Enter. Why was the hospital WiFi so slow? Finally, the search results loaded. He scanned the results; there was not a Phil Lester video to be seen. Jaw clenching, Dan searched for _Phil’s Video Blog – 27th March 2006_. No results. _Lonely Day - System of a Down_. A bunch of useless lyric videos. _Tim’s Adventure_. Fuck’s sake, he did not care about someone’s pet cat Timothy! How… How was this possible?

He refused to cry. Instead of giving in to sorrow and hopelessness, ire filled Dan’s veins. It was all he could do to not fling the stupid ass laptop across the room. Fuck this doctor! Fuck the nurse! Fuck everything! They had ruined everything for Dan. They had taken away his reason to live! It was all their fault. Why should he care about anything anymore? What was the fucking point if he could not do this all by Phil’s side? Peej, Louise, Cat—they were all nice people, decent friends, but Phil was the person who had saved Dan. Phil was the one who Dan Skyped when everything had gone wrong; Phil was the one who Dan had planned to marry, and they were going to have kids and a dog and a house and they were going to do YouTube forever and see Dil’s great-great grandchildren raised by his and Phil’s own children. Everything was going to be perfect, but perhaps perfect was too good to be true.

“Dan!” a vaguely familiar voice cried out of the blue. Looking up from the screen which now appeared to have a white patch where Dan had squeezed it in his fury, his eyes met with some girl. Who was this? “Dan? How are you?”

Then he remembered. It was Erin, his girlfriend at the time. “Hey,” he replied, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“Do you want to talk?” she asked softly, sitting on the end of his bed. “Your family’s on the way; I hear that they’re stuck in traffic. It should only be a few minutes now.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Dan replied curtly. He held no affection for this woman. Perhaps he once had; perhaps if she had talked to the actual Dan of March two-thousand-and-nine, he would have been far sweeter to her. But this simply felt like some twisted joke, taunting him about the absence of the love of his life—yes, that was quite safe to say, as disgustingly cheesy as it sounded.

So they just sat there, silence stretching out as the doctor ran around, occasionally prodding some device into Dan’s mouth or fumbling around with Dan’s tubes. He did not hate Erin. It had not been a messy breakup—well, there was no breakup it seemed, but when they did break up in the ‘dream’, it had not been messy. They had simply drifted apart. They were Facebook friends, occasionally went to some mutual friend’s party and talked, but in Dan’s current mood, he felt no need to give this person any common courtesy.

After what felt like an eternity—a borderline awkward eternity at that—a familiar voice yelled, “Dan!”

Brown eyes darkened as they saw the trio rushing in to the cubicle.

“Hi,” the adolescent greeted stiffly. He did not have a plethora of fond family memories; some of his extended relatives were all right, and he did not mind his brother, but his parents had given him some hell over the years. But hey, Phil did not exist, and to them, Dan was simply the accidental, straight, polite son they wanted.

Scoffing internally, the boy missed his parents’ next lines, thinking more about how his parents were to him in the ‘future’ than how they were at that moment.

“Come on then!” the couple urged their eldest son, extending a hand.

“Huh?” Dan muttered, a bitter undertone detectable in his voice.

“We’re going home, Daniel,” Timothy repeated; Dan had given up calling him Dad long ago.

Uttering a quiet “oh,” Dan fixed his ugly, far-too-long fringe and stood up, all the machines now taken off of him and clean, everyday clothing piled in front of him. Everyone left the small area, Erin leaving the hospital entirely with a sweet peck to the cheek, closing the curtains as she left in order to give Dan some privacy as he changed. _Why do they have to remove your underwear when they change you into hospital gowns?_

After changing, Dan waved a short, but perhaps more polite than he had been to him before, goodbye to the doctor and also to the nurse as he passed her in the corridors. By the time he had reached the car, the patient—or, what perhaps might be more appropriate, ex-patient—was in a considerably better mood.

“Hop in,” Timothy prompted, looking, to Dan’s mild surprise, genuinely happy to see his son again.

“We’re so glad to see you awake,” Karen added with a hint of nerves, eying her curt husband.

Dan did not speak, simply getting in next to Adrian. He did not even keep in touch with his family in the ‘real’ world—or was it fake? Regardless, it was the universe which actually mattered—so why should he even bother offering them kindness here? It would not matter anyway. He would find a way to find Phil, to get out of this hell. This would end up being some sort of stupid ass dream, he was certain, and with that determination flowing through his veins, the eldest Howell brother drifted to sleep.

***

“Dan!”

 _Ugh. What now? Why is everyone calling my fucking name?_ He did not open his eyes, clutching his soft duvet tighter.

“ _Daniel James Howell_!” the voice insisted a second time, this time a large hand shaking Dan’s shoulder. Said voice and said hand were quickly recognised by Dan’s Phil-deprived brain, and the boy’s eyes opened immediately.

 _See! It was all a fucking dream after all!_ Nearly crying of relief, Dan ignored his fuzzy vision and embraced the dark-haired man next to him.

“Where have you been?” Phil implored after a solid few seconds of tight hugging.

“What do you mean? Sleeping, and having a horrible dream.”

“You weren’t in your bed when I woke up,” Phil answered, hurt evident in his voice. And, to the notice of Dan, his boyfriend’s voice seemed disjointed as well, of an almost distant quality.

“Wha… Well, I don’t know! What time is it?”

“It’s five PM; I woke up at ten. Where on earth have you been?”

Bolting up from his slack position, Dan rubbed his eyes and observed the scene around him. It was his room, all right, but things seemed almost… dream-like. But he was not a lucid dreamer and he felt perfectly conscious at that moment. This was not a dream. It was not that his room was foggy or broken, but something just felt… Off. Something felt wrong in Dan’s gut, and while it was probably stupid and just paranoid, this gut feeling felt even stronger than any random ‘I should have pizza for lunch’ or ‘I’m going to fail this exam’ kind of gut feeling he had experienced in the past. After being silent for a long while, the now-twenty-five-year-old replied,

“I… Don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you _don’t know_? I’ve been worried sick, Dan!” Then, pausing, voice softening, Phil enquired, “Well, I guess… It’s not your fault, is it? So… Tell me about your dream.”

Biting his lip, the younger of the two men thought about how to begin his story. And, before he could ponder consciously what to say, the words came gushing out, about how he was in two thousand and nine, how Phil was not there, all of the thoughts he had in the dream, about how he had to face his family, about how his entire world had fallen apart in minutes. But, then again, it had not. He was fine; Phil was there, he was in his apartment, and, some details tweaked, he could probably turn the dream into some funny Danecdote for his channel. Yet, he still felt as if he was still in shock from the dream, as if it had not reached its conclusion yet. But he did not fret about that, and finished his story all the way to when he got into the car, only leaving out one detail—his girlfriend. Even if there was nothing he could have done, even though it technically was not his fault, Dan felt as if he was somehow cheating on Phil with this past figure. The guilt gnawed away at his stomach, as if he had something to hide, a shameful act to conceal. From experience, Dan should have learnt his lesson, that hiding or lying or twisting the truth was never going to turn out in his favour, but at that moment, it felt like a simple white lie. Nobody would get hurt by it, right? It was not even a lie; he was simply excluding a detail from a story which could have made someone uncomfortable.

“Dan…” Phil murmured after a pause, when Dan had made it clear that he had finished. “Dan, babe, I’m right here. I’m here, and your family’s off away from you, and you’re safe. Don’t worry.”

Suddenly feeling unusually tearful, Dan leant into Phil’s embrace yet again, fat droplets of salty fluid falling from his eyes. His silent crying turned into a violent sob, gasps wracking his body as he clung desperately to his lover, lip wobbling as he wrenched out more sobs. He did not know why he was crying, but he did, and he cried and he cried and he cried, safe in Phil’s arms, until he fell asleep again.

And then Dan’s eyes opened, taking in the countryside as it rolled by outside the car window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the positive feedback!


	3. chapter three.

Keys clicked into place as Timothy opened the front door, revealing an obnoxiously bright hallway. Dan had not seen this house in years—his parents had moved since then, and it was not as if Dan payed visits to his family for fun anyway.

Hesitating, the teenager allowed his family to enter first, still shaken from his ‘dream’. Phil had been so real, so utterly tangible, strong and warm and _there_ ; he could not be a figment of Dan’s imagination, surely. Fuck this! Fuck everything! This was the type of thing Dan could dream up. Who said that he had to go into the house?

“Hurry up!” Karen called.

 _Piss off_ was on the tip of Dan’s tongue, but he decided to swallow his scathing words and instead replied, “Coming.”

 He did not dare to look around, instead sprinting up the staircase, just about resisting the inexplicable urge to curse at his family. Only stopping once inside his room, Dan shut the door, forcing himself to not slam it. If only his family could leave him the hell alone.

Exhaling slowly, the boy seated himself upon his old bed, looking around. His furniture was intriguingly not dusty—had his family bothered to keep his room clean while he was out cold? And, fuck, everything looked _so ugly_. The last time he had seen this room was sometime when some asshole trolled him with Hello Internet.

_Hello Internet…_

Of course. YouTube still existed, even if Phil did not.

***

After half an hour of precarious balancing of books and CD cases, a ‘tripod’ was mounted and a laptop was placed on top of it in order to get, quote, “that perfect MySpace angle.”

Dan was not actually sure what he ought to do for his first video. He had simply set up his laptop perfectly to recreate Hello Internet, but shit, Phil was gone—it was not as if he could mess up time and space more by doing a less cringey first video.

And so the next hour or so was not spent recording a terribly edited, cringe-worthy video, but rather doodling pages upon pages of notes on what his first video could be. Despite his efforts, though, Dan could not find any of his ideas appealing. They all did not seem first-video worthy, goddammit. So, throwing all of his messily scribbled ideas into the bin—recycling was overrated—Dan went down a different route.

“Hi.”

“So, my name is—”, cue obnoxious hand gesture—“Dan.”

Cue another obnoxious hand gesture.

“Nice to meet you.”

From Phil’s kind of cute, if he was to be honest now, insistence on playing the video every time they had some domestic squabble, Dan knew all of the lines off by heart. Phil would insist upon letting the video finish in order to “admire it in all its glory” so Dan did not stop once to ponder his next line, but instead did it all in one shot, imitating jump cuts with quick _actual jumping_.

Blah blah blah, love you forever, stupid fucking dancing, blah blah, what the loud bleep am I doing, end.

But, after the ‘stop’ button had been clicked on, Dan still did not find himself satisfied. Did he really want to remake every single awful, cringey video with his terrible, overgrown hair? The hospital had not bothered to cut his hair, it seemed, so it drooped down to his shoulders. It was not a good look for Dan, definitely.

Deleting the video file, Dan decided against using his remade Hello Internet and instead pulled out scissors to trim his awful hair. But, try as he might, he could not quite replicate his ‘old’ haircut—and by old, he meant the haircut he remembered before he woke up—so he decided to just cut his hair into a normal fucking haircut, not 2007 scene kid hair. After fumbling around with the scissors for a while, Dan’s hair ended up very short—at least, compared to what he was used to—and very inconspicuous in the world of ordinary people.

After showering and making himself no longer look as if he had not cleaned himself in eight months—well, he had not—Dan flipped up the lid of his laptop again. Perhaps this was a stupid idea, but it was the best that he could think of as of then.

He drew every single frame, animating the old way because he did not own any good editing software all the way back then, doing a voiceover with his awful mic. It was third person and he did not use the names Dan or Phil. He did not draw the fringes or give them brown and blue—or, as Dan had said in world so far away, three colours at once: blue, green, and yellow—eyes, but it was the same story nonetheless.

What compelled him to make such a cheesy and cringe-worthy video was beyond him. Perhaps it was the feeling that he might not ever see Phil again, or just because it was probably the most unique idea he had at the time and he _had_ to make videos—that was how he had made it through life. Internet, internet, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr—the internet had, as disgustingly cheesy as it sounded, saved his life.

His parents had probably heard him and they probably thought that he was barking mad for talking to himself, but he did not care. Making videos was cathartic, in a way, relieved the stress of waking up in a body foreign to him and a time long gone. There might not even have been stress if Phil just had the balls to freaking _exist_  ; starting everything over wasn’t too bad, although he was content how he had been.

Sighing at his haphazard thoughts, Dan fumbled around with Internet Explorer and the old, clunky interface before a bar began to fill. It read _uploading_ and, with that, Dan relaxed.

***

Now, what could Dan do whilst the video uploaded? Just as the thought passed through his mind, a glare caught his eyes. The light had caught on his phone screen, and his second idea which he went through with that day had struck him.

He knew the number off by heart now. Of course, it had changed over the years, but he still recalled what it ought to be all the way back where he was. Tapping out the digits at lightning speed, a quaking finger pressed the green button and proceeded to hold the receiver to Dan’s ear.

Two rings.

Four rings.

Six rings.

It went on for what felt like an eternity, until it became clear that Phil did not exist, or at least, he did not have YouTube or a phone. Or maybe he had both, but under a different username and a different number. _Facebook?_ Dan did not feel very hopeful, but he was willing to try anything at that moment. Biting his bottom lip until he tasted a metallic tang, the boy typed in _Phil Lester_ into the blue search bar.

For a moment, before he hit Enter, Dan paused. _Phil Lester-Howell._ How did that sound? It had a pretty ring to it, or perhaps that was just him. _Dan Howell-Lester._ Neither was a reality, or could become a reality, it seemed. Or perhaps, if he returned to Phil, it could become a reality. Was this reality anyway? Perhaps the ‘other’ universe was reality. Fuck, it was all so confusing and so frustrating and goddammit, Dan just wanted to wake up in Phil’s arms and spend the day with his boyfriend and not have any complicated, fantasy-fiction type shit messing everything up.

Dan’s ears began to ring as he hit Enter, the spinning circle seeming to twirl endlessly. At last, as Dan had predicted would inevitably happen, no results returned.

Clenching his teeth irritably, the teenager checked the tab which had YouTube open. The bar was about halfway full now.

 _What was Martyn’s number back then?_ Shit, he didn’t know. He didn’t know many numbers off by heart. He knew his own, all of his, and also all of Phil’s dating back to two thousand and nine. Who else could he call to at least confirm they bloody existed?

 _Kathryn_. Yes! He knew Kathryn's number, or at least what it was nowadays… It was probably different seven years ago, but whatever. He could at least try. Unenthusiastically, tired fingers tapped out a number, pausing at times to make sure that it was correct. He did not expect anyone to answer but at that point he was desperate.

The phone rang twelve times—Dan counted, with nothing else to do as the video uploaded—before the voice of a young man came through, broken and scratchy from poor connection he guessed, “Hello?”

 _That’s not Kathryn._ Should he respond or hang up?

“Hi,” Dan responded. There were a million things he wanted to say, and they all flew around in his head as if they were tiny birds trying to escape from a cage. They filled his mind with fuzz, and he could only manage to say _hi_ as a plethora of questions and sentences seemed to battle for dominance.

“Wrong number?”

“Uh, yeah.” Instead of _what’s your name?_ or _I’m looking for Kathryn_ or something which might give Dan insight into what the hell was going on, _uh, yeah_ seemed to be a suitable substitute.

And before Dan could add anything else, the man hung up, leaving Dan lying on his bed, video uploaded, and no closer to Phil, or whatever the hell it was he wanted, than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait! i know this chapter seems filler-y but i promise the next chapter will see some story progression and this chapter will be of use! i have a plot outlined and everything's written for a reason :)


	4. chapter four.

_Fuck._ Dan fell asleep. Groaning at the soreness of his neck, the emotionally drained man managed to prop himself up on his elbows and ease his eyes open.

Oh, Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. How many times did he have to go through waking up in some foreign place, disoriented and confused? Well, this time it was not really a foreign place. A drop of relief flowed through Dan for a moment, before he tensed at the notion of not knowing where he would wake up, of fearing going to sleep or even lying down because apparently that caused unpredictable teleportation.

Hastily getting out of bed, barefoot and looking a mess, Dan looked for his boyfriend.

“Phil?”

Almost immediately, there was a response. Dan heard urgent footsteps growing louder and louder until a familiar face appeared in the bedroom’s doorframe.

“Dan! Where have you been?” There was no hurt or anger in his voice, only worry. Of course, Dan knew that he could not do anything about his predicament, but he could not help but feel guilty for causing Phil’s concern.

“I don’t know. I mean, I do. I went back to my family. I have no fucking clue what’s going on, Phil, and I’m scared.”

At Dan’s last sentence, the older man walked into the room and held onto Dan’s biceps. Deep, cerulean eyes met chestnut ones, exchanging sympathy, sharing a burden; they did not know what the burden was, but it was shared nonetheless.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, but, as stupid as my advice sounds, try not to worry. The situation is clearly out of anyone’s control. The best thing that I could suggest is try to not lie down or sleep unless if you’re tired,” Phil tried, biting his lip as he looked off into the distance.

Sighing, Dan broke off from Phil’s grip and sat down on his bed. “I feel tired. Physically. I normally wouldn’t fall asleep in a car or just from lying down on my bed in daytime, not shutting my eyes or anything.  I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Then that makes the both of us,” Phil replied with a note of finality.

Pulling Dan up off the bed, Phil wrapped his arm around Dan’s waist and led his brown-haired boyfriend to the lounge. Dan curled up on the sofa in his usual spot, staring off at some spot on the wall as Phil opened his laptop. The pair lost track of time as each were in their own worlds it seemed, Phil alone to his thoughts and Dan alone to his.

After the silence had stretched out for god knew how long, Phil spoke up, “I can’t find anything on this.”

“What?”

“I’ve been looking it up. Nada.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Let me just Google _what to do when you randomly wake up seven years in the past and your boyfriend is missing and you’re really tired so you randomly fall asleep and find yourself with your boyfriend again but then you wake up_. I’m sure that I’ll find plenty of helpful results.”

The sides of Phil’s mouth quirked up and Dan could not help but still feel flustered, after all this time, at his partner’s adorable smile.

“All right, then. Should we… Should we call our friends for advice?”

“What friends?” Dan joked, before going silent. After a moment’s pause, he added, “I guess. I’m just so fucking tired. I don’t want to deal with this.”

Not responding to Dan’s sentiment, Phil simply pulled out his phone in order to invite some friends around. Out of those he texted, Louise, PJ, and his parents said that they would be over soon.

“I didn’t tell them anything about the situation, just said that I needed them over,” the older of the two mumbled mindlessly.

Something incomprehensible was murmured in response, and then it was just the couple, the sofa, and their thoughts until someone arrived.

Dan took this time to ponder the mechanics of his predicament. If he disappeared from Phil’s world when he was in the other place, did that mean that he was missing from two thousand and nine at that moment? Was his family wondering where he was, or did they not give a shit? What had caused all this, anyway? Godammit, it was all so confusing and neither of the pair was up for dealing with any of it.

Interrupting his thoughts, the doorbell rang. Before Dan could respond, his boyfriend leapt up and speedwalked to the door, as if he almost did not want Dan to get up.

“Phil! Hi,” Dan could hear through the wall. It was PJ’s voice.

After a few minutes, Louise arrived, then Phil’s parents. The group was clustered in the lounge as Phil looked to Dan, silently asking if Dan wanted to explain. Dan shook his head and, taking the cue, Phil began to talk, parroting what Dan had told him earlier that day. Once he had finished, Dan added,

“It’s definitely not a dream. It felt real; I know it happened, somewhere, somehow.”

“We’re not questioning that it happened, Dan,” Kathryn said softly, laying a hand on Dan’s knee. “I believe you.”

Murmurs of agreement spread throughout the room, before it fell silent as the group pieced together their individual theories. Louise was the first to speak up.

“I don’t think we can come to any sort of conclusion so soon. We’d need to read up on all this,” she contributed. “Sorry that’s not that helpful, but I think that’s the direction we need to take.”

Nods of agreement. Indistinguishable murmurs. The group did not seem particularly receptive to conversation.

“This reminds me of a story I was told as a child. But that’s just a story. I really have no clue,” Kathryn supplied quietly.

Suddenly interested, Dan looked up from his lap and finally paid attention to his surroundings rather than his whirling thoughts. His first thought was that all of the colours were muted, as if they had been put through a filter before reaching Dan—as if he was watching everything through some sort of screen and everything was actually virtual. It did not feel fake, though. It felt just as real as being in two thousand and nine; something just felt off was all.

“Tell us,” he said, meeting the older woman’s eyes.

“No, it’s stupid. Just reminded me of it. The situation is so vague; this is irrelevant.”

“Well, it can’t hurt to tell,” Phil butted in.

All eyes were on Kathryn now and her cheeks appeared to be flushed with a rosy hue as she shrugged and began to speak.

“Well, don’t blame me when this turns out to be useless. But the story went that there were actually two different dimensions and everyone lived in one. Most people had some sort of alter ego in the other dimension but some didn’t and the dimensions are both very similar, just with different people in them. I was just told that there was some magical man who could flit between the dimensions at will.”

When she did not continue, Dan asked, “So what happened to the guy?”

Kathryn laughed lightly. “It’s fictional, you know, Dan. But I can’t quite remember. I was really young and probably butchered the details a bit. There was probably some cheesy moral at the end and then that’d be it.”

“I think that’s just a tale, honestly,” PJ commented, lifting his shoulders in a shrug.

“Yeah. I don’t think that Dan’s some sort of magical superhero—sorry, Dan.”

Smiling at his boyfriend’s silly comment, Dan announced, “Unless if anyone else can think of anything, I think I’ll cook everyone some dinner.”

Instantly, Phil stood up and insisted, “No, Dan, you’ve literally just travelled between dimensions. Or something. My point is, let me do the cooking. You have enough on your plate.”

Dan rolled his eyes affectionately at Phil’s protectiveness but did not argue, instead going onto his phone to see if he could find anything of use. He ended up scrolling through his Tumblr dashboard.

The rest of the evening went by without event and, soon after the Lesters, Louise, and PJ left—which was late—the couple made their way to Phil’s room. They kissed and they fucked and they cuddled, all quickly, and neither put too much into it. It was almost as if they were saying goodbye, not spending quality time with each other, with the unpredictability of what was happening.

“See you, Dan,” Phil mumbled softly, cradling Dan in his arms. Fuck, his voice was so damn hot when it was low and rumbly like this.

“Catch you later, Phil,” Dan replied as his eyes shut and he lay limp under Phil’s colourful bed covers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentine's day, ya nerds!
> 
> p.s. yes. this was uploaded on vday. ao3 needs to get better servers because i kept getting error 503 trying to post this on the day so congrats it's a slightly stale chapter for you guys xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> stick around for updates! even though they'll probably be as regular as dan's videos lol. but i promise i have a plot in mind! and my writing will probably get less shoddy as the fanfic progresses.


End file.
